Yup you read correctly – Videotones videos including the premiere of this one (Brightness and Contrast) shown at Glastonbury part of Kleptones AV set – they are playing tonight (Sunday at 11pm – Rabbit Hole Stage, The Park).

‘Tell me now how does it feel’ - Music has become branding and branding has become music; marketers want to know what the audience is doing so as TV morphs into CCTV, the hanging garden of reality shows has become king. And the irony is more choice actually means less as there’s 57 channels and there’s nothing on as the news becomes another reality show and propaganda and lies become reality…

Woah there! Yes it’s a video mashup, but one that’s more like ‘Mad Groove’ but it’s darker and more conspiracy theory prone elder sibling. The Kleptones‘ excellent Brightness and Contrast mashing up New Order’s Blue Monday, Nirvana’s On a Plain, Cure’s Hanging Garden and Bruce Springstein’s 57 Channels is added to such footage as Tommy, a rare Godfrey Reggio short, EdTV, bits of Steal This Film, MC Hammer, Slacker, the Good Consumer and Adbusters shorts, The End of Violence and many more.

Someone pointed out that Donald Sutherland was a theme in all the Videotones videos – sorry it’s actually Ken Russell Followed by TVs, Godfrey Reggio and things exploding…

Apparently the Silent Disco set at Glasto went well for Eric & co. – great news

Can’t think of a clever thematic linking device apart from there is no mention of the World Cup or football in this po….DOH! Have an unrelated yet topical Chris Brown MAD cartoon mashup instead…

I should be so getting sick of Lady Gaga mashups by now, but no not yet. I was getting ready to hate Pomatic’s Thieves Like Romance Lady Gaga vs New Order mashup (well so few people do New Order justice, much abused in the mash world but rarely bettered) and was surprised to find out that’s it’s a total POP CHOON (Ian Act of Dog and Jeb 50 Pound Note please report to the front desk! beep!) mashing Thieves Like Us and Bad Romance to great effect.

In fact it’s part of a whole album ‘The Fame Monster Mash Hitz’ (title could be slightly better, C- see me!) and it’s pretty good – nothing here crossing genres or experimental like the last post but with tunes like Just Summer – Bananarama vs Lady Gaga (Cruel Summer vs Just Dance) it’s less about cred envelope-pushing and just recognising a good dancefloor-friendly totally pop mashup – which I remind you is quite hard to pull off well especially pure A vs B. And these two do that well – good summer pop mashups.

Unwanted Whisper by The Kleptones

Kleptones are off to several festies this year, including i_beta festival in the Netherlands and Glastonbury – and afore thee went they left us with a nice present, Unwanted Whisper a reversal mashup of their infamous Bootie track ‘Careless Or Dead’ – rather than using the George Michael instrumental this uses the acapella, and vice versa for the Jon Bon Jovi. Strange to hear this combo reversed, but it also works but in a less immediate way than Careless.

It’s 30 years since Ian Curtis died, so today Michael I’m mostly listening to Joy Division. Here have ‘These Days’ – b-side to Love Will Tear Us Apart and one of, if not the, last studio recordings Ian did, a mile or two (literally) from where I was born and grew up – although I’d just moved down south a few months earlier at that time.

Also vocal-less but really digging Incubation today, off the Komakino single:

R.I.P. Ian – listening to one track off the Komakino flexi I wonder if the next album would’ve been quite electronic. What might have been…although instead we got New Order, a much sunnier cousin to the darker JD, so not all bad, Here it is with some datamoshing (which is like the modern equivalent of my running VHS tape through backwards techniques at college; creating MPEG2 intentional encoding errors as transitions:

Want to hear more? Well check out Recycle, the New Order / Joy Division remasters project blog run by longtime friend of Radio Clash and myself Jeb £50 Note and friends.

…these two videos have to be the most (un?)intentionally funny live performances they ever did, in a history of idiosyncratic live performances (remember this is the band that insisted on going onto Top of the Pops to perform the biggest selling 12″ of all time, live, and played so badly and out of tune that the track then did another first – it went DOWN the charts after a TV appearance!).

Talking of that infamous track – Blue Monday – this seems to be a live Radio 1 telethon from the mid 80′s where Barney seems to be having a few problems…(contains swearing and gratuitous shorts)

And of a similar (lack of) quality is this telling clip of a lonely Hooky on Other Side of Midnight (hey I used to watch that!) who looks rather like the rest of the band have run off and left him to it all alone and embarassed: (contains Tony Wilson and Paul Morley reference)

I just love the bemused slow clap at the end, and the frantic shots of the director trying to make a Mac and a few racks of gear interesting…

Ahh the heady heady days of the 1980′s…

For those into Joy Division and New Order, until Friday 23rd Jan, see the 2007 Grant Gee documentary ‘Joy Division‘ online. You know the one were Annik Honnore is interviewed (this is why Deborah Curtis unusually refused to take part) and interviews with all the band members, Peter Saville, Paul Morley and Tony Wilson – even Genesis P. turns up at one point…and loads of stuff I’ve never seen nor heard of Joy Division.

I don’t think I’ve ever really explained the connection with Joy Division and New Order that well; maybe it’s the roots (I was born in Greater Manchester in the 70′s) and the fact I can remember that atmosphere, that place, that feeling – what Tony Wilson talks about and others about the feel of Manchester in the 70′s is very true, people think it’s exaggeration but concrete and rain is the best thing I can say about it. Grim.

Maybe it’s the time of my life in my 20′s when I revisited and found out more about them, already being a fan of New Order, and for the first time appreciating their darkness as saying something about me.

Or maybe I’ll never know. Certainly I find it hard to hear Closer, partly because of the obvious state of Ian’smind but partly because it is a such a dark album that takes me back to a dark time of my life. Weirdly I see Unknown Pleasures as being quite upbeat and poppy LOL – I own a copy of that. Never owned a copy of Closer; even though I have Love Will Tear Us Apart on 7″. It’s not an album I can totally love, it’s too cold, although I really respect it.

Anyway what this gets over better than Control is the otherworldliness of Ian Curtis and Martin Hannett’s production – the weird noises, the clangs, the echoing squeaks and the wails. It is a little bit like Sci-fi on the Manchester Ship Canal, really. And the ending is far less bleak.

Nice to also see the band and others saying how angry they were at Ian’s suicide, it wasn’t something that was said but everyone just thought ‘you prick’ rather than putting him on a pedestal, which unlike Kurt or Richey shows the fans weren’t buying a brand personality but a person, well four people in fact, someone who broke that barrier – that front – and genuinely, distressingly and destructively meant everything he sang.